Samsung Electronics bags AI chiplet foundry order from Tenstorrent

Canadian chip-designing unicorn Tenstorrent Inc. has become a new foundry customer of Samsung Electronics Co., the world’s second-biggest foundry that has been actively expanding its partnerships with fabless artificial intelligence chip startups amid the AI boom.

The Toronto-based fabless AI chip developer announced on Sunday that Samsung Electronics will mass-produce its RISC-V central processing unit (CPU) and AI acceleration chiplets from the Korean semiconductor giant’s new foundry fab in Taylor, Texas, using the SF4X process, or 4-nanometer (nm) node.

The latest order comes after Tenstorrent’s Chief Executive Jim Keller hinted at the startup’s move to deepen its collaboration with the Korean chip giant during the Samsung Foundry Forum in the US in June.

Tenstorrent, which became a unicorn, or a privately held startup valued at over $1 billion, in 2021, closed a $100 million strategic financing from Samsung and other financial backers such as Hyundai Motor Group and various venture capitals in August.

The latest foundry order also comes after Samsung Electronics won its first foundry order for its new US foundry facilities under construction from American fabless startup Groq Inc. in mid-August.

The Korean chip giant has been actively forging partnerships with fabless AI chip startups at home and abroad amid the ongoing AI craze, which is expected to help Samsung Electronics narrow the gap with its bigger foundry rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), the world’s biggest foundry.

Samsung Electronics, which is the world's top memory chip maker, is the world’s No. 2 foundry company, trailing far behind TSMC.   

The Korean chip giant has obtained an order from Korean AI chip designer Rebellions Inc. to produce next-generation AI chips on a 5-nm node. It will also build four types of high-performance AI chips for another Korean AI chip developer DEEPX Co.

Its new foundry in Taylor, Texas is scheduled to kick off mass production in the second half of 2024.

JIM KELLER’S TENSTORRENT

Tenstorrent founded in 2016 is led by top chip designer Jim Keller, who previously worked at Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (AMD ) and Intel Corp.

Its next-generation AI chiplets to be built by Samsung Electronics are designed to deliver scalable power from milliwatts to megawatts, catering to a wide range of applications ranging from edge devices such as mobile devices to data centers.

A chiplet is a sub-processing unit composed of multiple chips on a tiny integrated circuit, and its demand is growing rapidly amid the ongoing AI boom because it can improve chip performance significantly while consuming less power.

"Tenstorrent's focus is on developing high-performance compute and delivering these solutions to customers around the world," Tenstorrent CEO Keller was quoted as saying in the company’s press release.

"Samsung's advanced silicon manufacturing nodes will accelerate Tenstorrent's innovations in RISC-V and AI for data center and automotive solutions,” said Marco Chisari, head of Samsung's US Foundry business.

To further solidify its foundry leadership in the AI era, Samsung Electronics in June announced it will commence mass production of its 2-nm process for mobile applications in 2025, expand production capacity at its Pyeongtaek fab Line 3 in Korea and launch a new multi-die integration (MDI) alliance for next-generation packaging technology.

At the Samsung Foundry Forum and Samsung Advanced Foundry Ecosystem Forum 2023 held in Seoul in July, the South Korean tech giant also unveiled custom-tailored client support programs, including its latest 2- to 3-nm chip process design kits due for release in the second half of this year.

Write to Ye-Rin Choi at rambutan@hankyung.com

Sookyung Seo edited this article.